


The Haunting

by thedevilchicken



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ghost Sex, Ghosts, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-11 09:02:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20543570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Once Starrick was dead, Evie and Henry took a boat to India. Jacob, for his part, bought the deeds to the Alhambra.





	The Haunting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rhovanel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhovanel/gifts).

When their grand mission was complete, once Starrick was dead and London had been freed at last from the Templars' dastardly clutches, Evie and Henry fucked off to India together. 

Honestly, it seemed like the natural next step to all concerned, given their oddly intense exploits in the collection of pressed flowers and all that mutual soft-eyed pining every time they thought no one could see. Jacob actually almost convinced himself he preferred life in London in their absence. He didn't convince himself, mostly because he missed them both completely immoderately, but it was a very close-run thing. Topping might have liked to place a bet or two on it. 

Evie and Henry sailed away into the sunset, newlyweds with a new life ahead of them. Jacob, for his part, stayed where he was and purchased the Alhambra. What was left of it, at least. The parts that weren't charcoal and ash.

They reopened their doors eighteen months ago now. Business is as good as it ever was.

\---

On the event of Maxwell Roth's death, ownership of the half-destroyed shell of an ex-music hall had passed to Roth's faithful old Lewis, who his will made the sole legal beneficiary. It turned out Lewis wanted at all to do with the place, however; bad memories, Jacob assumed, given Roth's untimely end. He had a few of those himself - bad memories, he meant, though he had to admit he wasn't exactly a stranger to untimely ends. They were rather his stock-in-trade.

It was actually Lewis himself who put the notion of buying the ramshackle, fire-eaten old relic into Jacob's head in the first place, or at least the letter from his solicitor that was delivered to the train one afternoon as it sat idling outside St Pancras. Jacob read it with his feet propped up on the edge of the safe, trying to concentrate over the sound of four Rooks playing whist in the next carriage along, then he crumpled it up and lobbed it inelegantly across the room. It landed on the floor and he glared at it like that might make it burst into very Alhambra-like flames at any second and take the memory of Maxwell Roth away with it. Half an hour later, he smoothed it back out and left it pinned to the board where the London Templars' pictures had been. Two days later, he replied, or at least his solicitor did. 

Lewis sold the place to Jacob all too gladly, for a suspiciously reasonable price that was well within his means now the Rooks ruled London. And the last thing Lewis said, once the papers were signed, was, "You do truly deserve one another, Mr. Frye." 

In that moment, Jacob didn't understand. Not very long after, he definitely did. 

Somehow, the building was still more or less structurally sound. It had been gutted by the fire, of course, but that went without saying; Jacob had been there that night, and had sort of been the reason it had happened in the first place, and so he'd seen it for himself. But soon, work began on reconstruction. Some of the Rooks had worked on building sites before, and others were only too pleased to hear they'd be taking over the Blighters' old headquarters like some kind of symbolic final victory, so all it really took was the hire of a decent architect and a competent foreman and they set about it. Jacob mucked in with the rest, and he slept on a rather beaten chaise longue in the remains of the old cloakroom. It made a change from the train. He didn't have the clacking of the wheels against the rails or the swaying of the carriage down the line to lull him into sleep.

Honestly, Jacob has never been particularly fond of prolonged periods of solitude - it tends to make him think, and deep thinking isn't exactly his strong suit. As work continued over the next few weeks, he thought that might be to blame for what was wrong with him; there were times he could have sworn he wasn't alone at night, and he didn't just mean the Rooks drinking while they played cards in the gutted theatre where Roth had died. It was just a feeling at first but then he started to see things, just a glimpse out of the corner of his eye now and then as he was walking down corridors, or helping to ferry in fresh timber, or repainting yet another wall. There was something there with him, but he never felt menaced by it. 

Then, one night not long after he'd moved into Roth's old rooms some four months into the refurbishments, suddenly it made a kind of perverse sense. He'd just stripped off his boots and his coat and his gauntlet with its hidden blade, the one he'd used to kill the theatre's previous proprietor. He's just hung his waistcoat over the back of a chair and sprawled face-down on the nice new bed he'd helped to haul in up the tall, refurbished staircase. There was a lamp still burning on the cabinet beside the bed. It flickered. And when he turned and looked up to check if he'd left a window open for a breeze to cause that flicker, there was the spectral form of Maxwell Roth instead. 

"Well, this is unexpected," Jacob said. He pulled himself up and sat back against the headboard as he looked at him. He supposed it had only been a matter of time until one of the men he'd killed came back, all strange things he'd seen in life considered. "Can I just ask: are you haunting me or the Alhambra?"

Roth shrugged expansively, his arms spread wide. "Equal parts of both, I'd wager," Roth replied. Then he promptly disappeared into the air. 

Days passed before he saw him again, and by then he'd very nearly convinced himself he'd imagined the whole thing, or else dreamed it. It turned out he hadn't, though; he looked up as he was undressing one night and found Roth seated by the window with his legs crossed at the knee. 

"So, here you are again," Jacob said. "I convinced myself you weren't real." 

"Who's to say I am, my dear?" Roth replied, with a twist of his mouth. "Don't you miss me terribly? Perhaps I'm your guilty conscience made manifest."

Jacob had a retort on the tip of his tongue - something about Roth being terrible alright and surely he had better things to do with his afterlife than sit and watch him strip for bed at night - but he was gone again before he could say a word of it. That was just like Roth, always getting the last word. He for damn sure didn't feel guilty for killing him.

The next time was one morning a few days later, when Jacob was getting out of bed; Roth was sitting at the table where one Rook or another had left Jacob's breakfast and a newspaper on a strangely dainty silver tray, reading the headlines. 

"Have I been gone so long?" Roth asked. He tapped one gloved forefinger against the newsprint date. 

"Yes," Jacob replied. "It's been more than a year. Almost two." He pulled himself up out of bed, walked barefoot across the room and took the seat opposite him at the table, shirtlessness be damned. Roth had seen him fight at Topping's clubs once or twice, after all, and it wasn't like he'd ever wanted to get blood all over his shirt while he was at it. 

He remembered one night in particular, other men's blood staining the wraps on his hands and his own blood drying in the two-day stubble at his chin and neck, and Roth had taken off one glove while Topping counted out his evening's winnings. Roth had traced the outline of the rook at his shoulder. He'd run that same fingertip down the centre line of Jacob's still bare chest, from chin to navel. Jacob remembered how his heart had raced, and everything the look on Roth's face had promised. He'd have gone with him, too, if Evie hadn't sent a man for him from the train for some errand or other. Honestly, he'd given a second's careful thought to going with him anyway and to hell with Evie's errand - he'd never got to find out what Roth had wanted, but he'd had an idea. The only strange part to it was the fact he found he didn't object.

"I'm still angry with you, you know," Jacob said.

"And I with you," Roth replied. "One might say I've good reason. You did kill me, after all." 

Jacob supposed he had, downstairs in the theatre while everything had been catching fire. In the end, though, the only one who'd died that night was Roth, and the newspapers all agreed he'd brought it on himself: he'd lost his mind and burned himself to death while all the guests had flooded out the doors. 

Roth was angry with Jacob for killing him; Jacob was angry Roth for making him kill him. But, as time passed and refurbishments progressed, as their meetings grew more frequent, Jacob had to wonder if it was worth holding a grudge at all. He'd never been much good at it.

"You kissed me before you died," Jacob said, late one night not too long after the theatre had reopened. The first night had been exceptional - people are ghouls, after all, and delight in the macabre; business had remained so buoyant thereafter that Jacob wondered why he'd not branched out into the arts a lot sooner. He sat on the edge of the bed and he looked at Roth who was looking at him. 

Roth smiled, like he was conjuring up the moment that he'd done it. "I did, didn't I," he replied. "I remember it well." 

"So do I," Jacob said. And he watched Roth rise and come across the room. Roth's hand touched his shoulder; it wasn't much like a real touch at all, just a strange kind of warmth and tingling pressure on his skin. Jacob flinched at it, but he didn't move away. 

The next time, Roth kissed Jacob's temple; it felt the same, not a true touch but still something physical, something that still made his chest pull tight. The next time, Roth kissed Jacob's mouth and Jacob smiled despite himself. For all that Roth had turned out almost as bad as Starrick was, Jacob had to admit he was right: he _had_ missed him. He had no particular desire for him to go away again. He had no particular desire to return to his old clacking, swaying train carriage, either. 

He's made the Alhambra his home.

\---

"I've still not forgiven you, my dear," Roth says, tonight, as Jacob takes off his gauntlet. He uses it less often these days, but he does still use it. There are still Templars in London, after all. He still has enemies. 

"Well, I'm not exactly ecstatic about you, either," he replies. "Not all the time." 

Roth smiles. "There seems to be _some_ kind of ecstasy about you, however," he says, and Jacob groans because he knows exactly what he's talking about. 

He has a table set aside, in a box on a balcony overlooking the stage, so he can conduct business under the guise of watching the show; tonight, after business was done, Jacob sat there alone but not quite alone. The Alhambra's staff would swear on their mothers' lives or graves or both, given the chance, that they sometimes see Roth's ghost about the place, and tonight he was sitting by the new boss's side, plain as day. What they couldn't see was his hand under the table, planted between Jacob's thighs. He might not be completely substantial, but that doesn't mean he can't have an effect. Jacob spent most of tonight's performance uncomfortably hard inside his trousers. He sometimes wonders if Roth would have done the same to him while he was alive, and he suspects if he asked, he'd say _why, Jacob, of course I would._

Now, Jacob takes off his shirt and he toes off his boots and he drops his shirt on top of them. he unbuckles his belt and he drops his trousers and he kicks them off to add to the heap. Roth tuts; Jacob knows in life he was surprisingly tidier, but he usually just disapproves for disapproval's sake. He's watching, after all, not complaining, when Jacob strips off his underwear and takes himself in hand. 

He kneels on the bed, knees spread wide, sitting back on his heels, and grips his thighs as he does so. He lets his prick jut up hard and flushed and faintly moist just at the tip, and feels Roth's gaze on him. It's almost a physical thing, like when he tries to touch, and all it does is make Jacob's balls pull tighter, and his insides twist with heat. He's not put off at all. The way Roth looks at him just spurs him on and he strokes himself, languidly but that only lasts twenty seconds. Neither of them are patient men. Roth hasn't found any more of that in death than he had in life. 

Then Roth joins him there. Roth sheds spectral clothes and he kneels with him there, he grips at one of Jacob's shoulders and he rubs the thick, hard length of his shaft against Jacob's own. It's not the same as if he were alive; it makes the hairs stand up on the back of Jacob's neck, and when he runs his hand down Jacob's back, when his insubstantial fingers rub at the rim of Jacob's hole, everything is hot and tight and tingling. Jacob won't last. He never does. He can't quite make himself admit it, but it's the best he's ever had. 

Evie sends letters with a frequency you could very likely tell the time by, in that infuriatingly neat handwriting of hers that Jacob never spent the time the develop. Jacob had to ask her to direct them to the Alhambra and when she replied, she didn't understand what he was doing there. When he told her the place was making money, from the box office and a twice-weekly fight club, she decided that sounded more sensible. 

The truth is, though, he bought the place because of his old memories of Maxwell Roth. And Roth is precisely why he stays.


End file.
